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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">After settler pogroms, even worse genocidal violence to come</h1>
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<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span> - <span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">24 June 2023</span></span> </p>
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<span><img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2023-06/main_image40891_2uuluovdny.jpg?itok=KsutYuXo×tamp=1687569114" alt="" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="416" height="277"></span><p>Family
photos are displayed on a floor in the home of the Dawabsheh family in
the West Bank city of Duma, 31 July 2015. Ali Dawabsheh, 18 months old,
was killed along with his parents when settlers firebombed their home.
His older brother Ahmad survived.</p><small>
<span>ActiveStills</span></small><p>“He wasn’t
even fighting, was just trying to protect people,” the widow of Omar
Qateen told a delegation of diplomats in between deep breaths on Friday.</p>
<p>The woman said she was in pain from the grief after her husband was <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinian-killed-settler-pogrom-west-bank-town">killed</a>
as hundreds of rampaging settlers, some of them armed, set fire to
homes in Turmus Aya, a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank on
Wednesday.</p>
<p>Settlers attacked multiple Palestinian communities in the West Bank this week after Palestinian gunmen shot and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinian-killed-settler-pogrom-west-bank-town">killed four Israelis</a>
at Eli settlement, before being executed by armed civilians and special
forces. One day before the settlement shooting attack, Israeli forces
killed several Palestinians during a raid in Jenin, including two
children.</p>
<p>At the scene of the attack in Eli on Tuesday, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-gunmen-kill-four-near-west-bank-israeli-settlement-emergency-2023-06-20/">called on</a> settlers in the West Bank to pick up arms.</p>
<p>In the revenge attacks that followed, settlers <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-22/ty-article/.premium/israeli-settlers-rip-up-quran-vandalize-west-bank-mosque-during-rampage/00000188-e430-d5fc-ab9d-ff78435a0000">vandalized a mosque</a> and tore up copies of the Quran and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-22/ty-article/.premium/settlers-burn-palestinian-school-try-to-torch-a-mosque-in-shooters-west-bank-village/00000188-e2f0-df52-a79d-fef3d2150000">set fire</a> to a school in Urif, the Eli gunmen’s hometown. They also cut off electricity to the entire village.
</p>
The Israeli military and police used live fire and crowd control weapons against Palestinians trying to defend themselves and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestinian-shot-dead-settlers-storm-west-bank-town">obstructed the movement</a> of ambulances and fire trucks in Turmus Aya, only several miles away from Eli.
<p>Footage shows settlers firing guns towards Palestinian homes in Turmus Aya:
</p>
During the rampage in Turmus Aya, 27-year-old Omar Qateen was shot and
killed by Israeli police, who initially said that the slain man was
armed – a claim refuted by his widow and <a href="https://www.972mag.com/turmus-ayya-settler-pogrom-palestinians-us/">not repeated</a> in subsequent police statements.
<p>Qateen’s wife said that she was comforted knowing that her husband
and father of their two young children died bravely while coming to the
aid of others.</p>
<p>Switching from American-accented English – Qateen’s wife and children
are reportedly US citizens – to Arabic, the bereaved woman said they
needed international protection.</p>
<h2>“This is genocide”</h2>
<p>That was also the plea from Lafi Adeeb, the mayor of Turmus Aya, after settlers <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/palestinian-killed-settler-pogrom-west-bank-town">set fire to more than 30 homes</a> in the town, attempting to burn families alive.</p>
<p>“This is genocide, this is a war against us. Settlers carrying
weapons and canisters full of fuel attack our small village and set fire
to houses over the heads of their inhabitants,” Adeeb told the
publication <em>Middle East Eye.</em></p>
<p>“The attack was large and organized, with full protection and
coordination with the Israeli army, which is working against us and
protecting them,” Adeeb added.
</p>
Following Wednesday’s violence in Turmus Aya, famously home to many Palestinian Americans, the US Office of Palestinian Affairs <a href="https://twitter.com/uspalaffairs/status/1671589282736160770">said</a> it was “appalled at ongoing settler attacks.”
<p>The office added that it called on Israeli authorities to “protect US
and Palestinian civilians, and prosecute those responsible.”</p>
<p>Tom Nides, the US ambassador to Israel, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-22/ty-article/.premium/u-s-ambassador-we-will-not-stand-idly-by-and-watch-settler-violence/00000188-e3d1-d5fc-ab9d-fbf9ab070000">said</a> that “we do not stand and watch settler violence. I’ve been very clear and very specific that we will not stand by.”</p>
<p>In reality, US policy is even worse than doing nothing. Washington
provides Israel a floor of $3.8 billion in military aid each year,
allowing for the violent colonization of Palestinian land and brutal
repression of any and all resistance against it.
</p>
Meanwhile, the US shields Israel from accountability at all
international fora, including the International Criminal Court, where it
opposes the now apparently shelved Palestine investigation.
<p>This impunity breeds the settler rampages that terrorized residents
in more than a dozen defenseless Palestinian communities this week,
violence explicitly encouraged by Israel’s leaders.
</p>
Itamar Ben-Gvir, kingmaker in Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile coalition government, once again made this clear on Friday when he <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/visiting-evyatar-ben-gvir-tells-settlers-to-head-for-the-hilltops-expand-outposts/">visited Evyatar</a>, a settlement outpost in the northern West Bank.
He urged settlers to “run for the hilltops” – harkening back to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11576714">identical exhortation</a>
made 25 years ago by Ariel Sharon, a notorious war criminal who later
became Israel’s prime minister. Ben-Gvir may well hope and expect that
he will follow the same path.
<p>“In addition to settling the land,” Ben-Gvir said, “we need a military operation: taking down buildings and killing terrorists.”</p>
<p>“Not one or two, but dozens and hundreds, and if need be thousands!” he said.</p>
<p>“Above all, this is how we will fulfill our great purpose: the land
of Israel for the people of Israel,” he added, meaning exclusive Jewish
control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, assuring settlers
that “we’ve got your back.”
</p>
Ben-Gvir was speaking to settlers at an outpost not authorized by the
government, built in May 2021 on land belonging to the Palestinian
communities of <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/beita">Beita</a>, Qabalan and Yatma on Jabal Subeih near the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
<p>Since then, several Palestinians have been <a href="https://www.btselem.org/firearms/20220228_nine_months_of_protesting_seven_killed_and_dozens_injured_in_the_town_of_beita">killed</a> during or in close proximity to protests against the settlement.</p>
<p>Ben-Gvir is honest about the fulfillment of Israel’s state ideology,
Zionism – that it requires killing Palestinians and pushing them off of
their land.</p>
<p>After all, that is how the state was founded – by militias massacring
and terrorizing Palestinians, forcing them to flee and denying their
right to return to their land and property. And now the state is being
steered by <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/spiritual-adviser-to-smotrich-theres-no-problem-with-having-a-halachic-state/">messianic figures like Bezalel finance minister Smotrich</a> who seek to impose Jewish theocratic rule.
</p>
Smotrich infamously called for Huwwara, a town near the West Bank city of Nablus, to be <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-calls-genocide-met-shrugs-washington-and-brussels">“wiped out”</a> after a settler rampage there in February, similar to the one in Turmus Aya this week.
<p>His allies in Netanyahu’s extreme-right coalition are seemingly open
to any means of securing Jewish domination in Palestine, including
burning children alive in the sanctity of their homes.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-08/ty-article-magazine/.premium/far-right-israeli-ministers-adviser-is-kahanist-activist-facing-racism-and-terror-charges/00000188-9774-d3a7-adcf-b77f86910000">chief of staff in Ben-Gvir’s ministry</a> is Hanamel Dorfman, who was filmed dancing at his 2013 wedding as his guests <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2015-12-24/ty-article/new-video-shows-extremist-jewish-leaders-present-at-wedding-of-hate/0000017f-f889-d318-afff-fbebc43d0000">stabbed and burned photos</a> of Ali Dawabsheh, a Palestinian toddler who was killed along with his parents when settlers firebombed his family’s home.</p>
<p>Ben-Gvir, who provided legal defense for the suspects of the 2015
firebombing attack that killed the Dawabsheh family, was among those in
attendance, as was Bentzi Gopstein, one of his advisors. Gopstein’s
daughter was the bride whose nuptials were being celebrated at the
infamous “wedding of hate.”</p>
<p>Before he started donning suits, Dorfman <a href="https://www.jta.org/2016/09/28/ny/the-ties-that-fray">led the Hilltop Youth</a>,
an extremist and religious-nationalist group of Israeli settlers who
agitate for a Jewish kingdom from which non-Jews would be expelled.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/family-baby-killed-settlers-fears-fresh-attacks/36916">The ringleader of the attack</a> against the Dawabsheh family home was allegedly part of the Hilltop Youth.</p>
<p>Once on the fringe, Jewish supremacists who <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/taking-apartheid-new-extremes/36986">venerate Baruch Goldstein</a>,
a US-born settler who murdered 29 Palestinian men and boys in Hebron’s
Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, are now running the Israeli government and have
oversight of its police and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/incoming-idf-chief-halevi-to-meet-with-smotrich-who-wields-authority-in-west-bank/">military forces</a>.
</p>
<h2>Settler terror is state terror</h2>
<p>Israel tries to maintain the pretense that settler violence is not sanctioned by the state, with its military spokesperson <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-spokesman-slams-settler-riots-that-create-terror-far-right-mk-it-was-a-protest/">describing</a> this week’s rampages as “very grave,” adding that it hinders the army’s ability to fight “terror.”</p>
<p>The spokesperson has also <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-22/ty-article/.premium/pogroms-against-palestinians-we-cant-shut-out-the-burden-of-history/00000188-e3d5-df52-a79d-fff7eb870000">claimed</a> that the Israeli military – which subjects Palestinians under its rule to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/4/13/under-israeli-surveillance-living-in-dystopia-in-palestine">total surveillance</a>
– had no advance knowledge of the attack by hundreds of settlers in
Turmus Aya, despite it being planned in WhatsApp groups and reportedly
leaked on social media.</p>
<p>As one Israeli analyst put it, if the military spokesperson’s claim
is to be believed (which it shouldn’t be), it doesn’t make sense that
Israel wouldn’t know about the plans unless they didn’t want to have
prior intelligence.
</p>
In an <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-06-23/ty-article-opinion/.premium/standing-orders-for-a-pogrom-against-palestinians/00000188-e459-d5fc-ab9d-ff79bc690000">editorial</a> on Friday, the Tel Aviv newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> observed that the attack on Turmus Aya “was predictable,” as was the army’s claim of intelligence failure.
<p>“When a failure keeps recurring for decades, it’s clear that the
problem isn’t lack of control, but a pattern of behavior and a decision
from on high – that is, from the country’s leadership – to allow
Israelis to attack Palestinians,” the editorial states.</p>
<p>“There’s no need for explicit orders; it’s enough to know the spirit of the commander.”</p>
<p>While the military seeks to preserve plausible deniability, Ben-Gvir
is forthright with the unpalatable truth: Backed by various state
apparatuses, settler terror in tandem with brutal military repression
(this week that included the first ever <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israeli-drone-attack-kills-three-near-jenin">military drone strike</a> in the West Bank) is what will secure exclusive Jewish rule from the river to the sea.</p>
<p>Netanyahu has expedited settlement expansion by giving “practically
all control over planning approval for construction” in settlements to
Smotrich, as <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-hands-smotrich-full-authority-to-expand-existing-settlements/">reported</a> by <em>The Times of Israel</em>.
</p>
Settlers established several new outposts since four Israelis were killed on Tuesday and others are <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/legalization-of-3-west-bank-outposts-among-plans-slated-for-approval-next-week/">set to be regularized</a> by Netanyahu’s government.
Ben-Gvir’s orders are clear: grab the hilltops.
<p>As bad as this week’s settler attacks may have been, the worst is yet
to come. And Israel’s powerful friends will be 100 percent complicit,
having ignored the pleas from Turmus Aya by answering settler state
terror with only empty gestures of toothless solidarity.</p> </div></div></div></div></div></div>